one of the more original and i thought interesting things DDO did was to have a menaingful stealth engine...

  as a friend put it; he had never seen anything like that in any game that WASN'T primarily a stealth game...

however; the "grind" of repeating levels - and of -despite often quitting groups for just this reason - playing with people who had done all the levels before -

 made stealth and scouting IRRELEVENT...

 "the guard will be RIGHT THERE"...

   "there will be the trap box right..."

 maybe random dungeons; or at least multiple-possible placements; would fix this;

  but just as clerics get turned into heal-bots; rogues became...trap-bots.

  So my suggestion?

   make use of the sealth system - one of the few things that set apart DDO from some other MMO's.

Originally stealth was a cool ability and when I tested in beta and for the first few months of live play, my stealth rogue was my favorite character.  Then the stealth nerfs came and pretty soon every mob could see you from across the room followed by you not being able to open a door without coming visible. 

Stealth should be one of those powerful abilities but (admittedly) players abused the power and got to some of the best chests, looted them, and left the dungeons without being seen.  My gripe here is that instead of the dev's coming up with better ways to protect the chests (like locking them, trapping them, let mobs have a chance to notice the chest opened and investigate, etc), they chose instead to nerf the stealth ability and render it effectivly ineffective.  Too bad.  A huge fun aspect of the game was taken away early on.

I have to disagree about the rogues and cleric-bots.  You can play them that way, yes.

However, the clerics I play with can save my rogue (who can UMD and self-heal and rez), but more often the cleric is casting a sound burst with a heightened DC to stun creatures.

Secondly, my rogue isn't built specifically for Stealth, but he can go stealth if required.  My guy is a mobility fighter with whirlwind and bluff-trigger abilities to control agro off and on (effectively should I swing or should I go) to the mobs.  However, my rogue can unlock any box or disable any trap (with a small chance of failure at end-game).  Lastly, he's built for speed and evasion -- I run gauntlets and retrieve stones for tactical retreats or sniper set-ups.  My rogue goes places where others darenot follow, and yeah we know the mobs are up ahead but we still need SOMEONE to go to that one place and sit there picking off a specific mob with arrows or returner weapons.

However, if you think Stealth is still underpowered and wimpy, check out what a level 16 wizard can do with some stealth...  Invaders Solo, by one of the greatest players out there.  This speaks volumes for how powerful Stealth is -- this is one of the deadliest quests out there.

I've seen the vid before and my wf wiz can stealth the same... is that a big deal?  Maybe for some but not so much for anyone that knows what they're doing with stealth.  Now back before the nerfs, stealth was actually a fun way to solo many of the quests.  Even when they made it that you become visible when you opened doors and chests or turned a lever or picked a trap it was still fun having to time out what you were doing against the mobs.  But when they made many of the mobs see stealthed (and I'm talking about a high dex/int rogue maxed in move silently and hide) as a cheezy response to many stealth players who abused the ability, that's when the DDO devs ruined the game for those that use stealth as a primary ability. 

Now I'm not saying stealth can't be fun now... just that the nerfs hurt the pleasure of playing a stealthy rogue class

Originally posted by Greyflame11

I've seen the vid before and my wf wiz can stealth the same... is that a big deal?  Maybe for some but not so much for anyone that knows what they're doing with stealth.  Now back before the nerfs, stealth was actually a fun way to solo many of the quests.  Even when they made it that you become visible when you opened doors and chests or turned a lever or picked a trap it was still fun having to time out what you were doing against the mobs.  But when they made many of the mobs see stealthed (and I'm talking about a high dex/int rogue maxed in move silently and hide) as a cheezy response to many stealth players who abused the ability, that's when the DDO devs ruined the game for those that use stealth as a primary ability. 

Now I'm not saying stealth can't be fun now... just that the nerfs hurt the pleasure of playing a stealthy rogue class

One of the reasons I left DDO and have not gone back is I felt the devs took it personally when players completed quests in unusual ways. They spent too much time adjusting quests and skills to limit players instead of spending that time making the rest of the game better. They seem to get to broken quests that do not benefit the players much much later then they do if the bug makes things easier for the players or benefits them.

DDO devs have always seemed to have an Us against Them mentality instead of working with the players who play their game.